Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Max Scherzer Dominates NL Run Prevention Leader Boards

Earlier, I posted the American League run prevention leaders. Now, for the National League. There is no surefire way to determine the best pitchers in the league, but a pitcher's job is to prevent runs. So, it's useful to estimate how many runs pitchers saved their teams compared to an average pitcher. In the past, I have explored four different ways to do this:

Pitching Runs - Runs Saved Above Average based on innings and runs allowed.

Base Runs - Runs Saved Above Average based on batters faced and hits, walks, total bases and home runs allowed.

FIP Runs - Runs Saved Above Average based on innings, bases on balls, hit batsmen and home runs allowed and strikeouts.

These measures are discussed in more detail in an earlier post. After computing them, you can aggregate them using weights depending on which measures you trust the most. I chose to take a simple average.

The 2015 National League leaders as of June 22 are listed in Table 1 below. Former Tigers right hander, now of the Nationals, Max Scherzer leads the league in all the above categories - Pitching Runs (24), Adjusted Pitching Runs (26), Base Runs (24) and FIP Runs (25). That gives him an aggregate of 25 runs prevented compared to an average pitcher. Zach Greinke of the Dodgers is second with 18 runs prevented. Table 1: NL Run Prevention Leaders, 2014